Adventures and Episodes May 2018

May 31, 2018

Welcome to a much more timely edition of Adventures and Episodes! What a month May has been!

Writing

It’s been a great month for writing.

I wrote 18,000 words in Turrim 3 this month. Half of those words I wrote over the week of Indie e-Con while running the word wars, which was super exciting! And I got to encourage other writer-friends in their pursuit of writing at the same time, which is one of my favorite things to do. Currently, I am sitting at 60,000 words, and while I was sort of hoping that I could finish this draft around 80,000 words, I’m starting to accept that this draft is going to be longer than that. I have one plot line almost wrapped up, but I still have 4 plot-lines to work through, most of which are only a quarter to half written at this point in time… so we’ll probably be sitting around 100-120K when it’s all said and written.

But I am enjoying where this story is going and how it’s all shaping up. The characters are really fun, and some surprising things have happened in this series, and when the story or characters surprise me, that’s always my favorite thing. This particular cast of characters is a bit more secretive and apt to spring last-minute 180s on me, but I don’t mind… too much!

I’m also starting to really look forward to Realm Makers. I’ve scheduled all of my appointments and my critique session, and I’m nervous-cited about those… the other night, my husband and I went for a walk and began the process of trying to figure out a good “elevator pitch” for the Turrim Archive, because blurbs/reducing my hundreds of thousands of words down into a single awesome paragraph is definitely the most difficult part of this whole authoring gig. We started to make some progress, so that was good. We chatted about publishing and the future of my writing career and while my plan at this point is to continue going the indie-pub route… I definitely wouldn’t flat-out turn down TOR if they come knocking.

Reading

I started a “Read the Bible in One Year” plan back on May 5, 2008, and I finally finished it on May 5, 2018. So my one-year plan only took 10 years to complete…. (in my defense, I pretty much only used the reading plan when I wasn’t actively participating in a Bible Study…) and while I’m sure I’ve read every verse in the Bible more than once, it’s nice to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’ve read every verse. Next I’d like to read it in chronological order, I think that would be interesting.

I finally read Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones. It was interesting. I had a bit of a hard time focusing on it, because it seemed a bit more jumpy or scattered than other books I’ve read of hers… but I enjoyed the story and look forward to reading the sequel.

With my kids I read Corrie Ten-Boom: Keeper of the Angel’s Den, Miracles on Maple Hill, The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, and Bruchko – all of which were fantastic.

Journey from Skioria by Kandi J Wyatt, which was a cute Middle Grade story. My review on that is coming next week.

Watching

We watched Avengers: Infinity War… and I’m still sort of internally screaming about that one. I’ll wait a bit longer before doing a review, as I know spoilers are still an issue for many.

Troll Hunters: season 3 released on May 25, and the whole family is enjoying it. We loved seasons 1 and 2, and it’s fun to be back with some of our new favorite characters.

With the kids we watched Epic and Mary Poppins and the Lego Movie… all re-watches, all excellent movies. We got Saving Mr. Banks recently and after watching Mary Poppins I really want to rewatch it. Also, knowing the story of Saving Mr. Banks… there were a lot of newly emotional moments in Mary Poppins this time around!

Derek and I watched Thor (the first one) again. I haven’t seen it since it was in theaters and AAAAAHHHHHH I just love it to pieces! Then we watched Avengers (1), because the Avengers movies are like Pringles. Apparently. It was as fun and hilarious as I remembered, and I was also reminded of why Tony Stark USED to be my favorite character (besides Hawkeye, of course) and why he has been bumming me out in the past several movies… because he lost some deep essence of what made him who he was in recent movies, and it’s hard to take. He had it back a little bit in Infinity War, but not quite to the same extent. He hasn’t really been “TONY” since Avengers, and I miss him.

Other than that, we’ve mostly been watching Star Trek: TNG. And Lost in Space, but I can only handle that in small doses because it’s INTENSE, y’all. (Usually I don’t mind intense, but this show has the feel of constantly being on the edge of everything going horribly wrong that requires a lot of energy to watch…)

Life-ing

Now that the weather is better, we’ve had some fun days going outside and picnicking at the park. We’ve had some friends over for game nights and made our patent-pending Giordano’s knock-off pizza a handful of times. The kids and I drove into the cities to see a friend of mine who happened to be in town with her new baby, and we got to hang out and catch up for a few hours, which was a blast.

We are finishing up the school year, just have about a week and a half left of work, and the kids are getting antsy for the freedom of summer vacation and trips to the pool. Gotta admit, I am, too.

The biggest news is that we’ve started clearing our property of trees and will soon be the proud owners of a large hole. (A foundation hole) *grin*

How was your May, dear Reader? Any big summer plans or trips?

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And three cheers for summer vacation. Almost here! Beyond my annual trek to Florida for Dicetower Con, my plans are still a little up in the air. Kicking around some camping, fishing, and other road trip possibilities, but haven’t settled on anything yet.

It’s such a blessing to live in a country where we have freedom to roam, though. Something it’s all too easy to take for granted.

I can’t believe I neglected to say what games we’ve played in the actual post! But to answer your question, we’ve played a TON of Sentinels of the Multiverse lately (it’s quickly become my husband’s favorite game), and some D&D, Pandemic, DixIt (which I thought was super fun), and Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters with the kids.

Huzzah for summer vacation!!!

It is a blessing, and one I definitely take for granted, but am also quite grateful for.

Having watched the Avengers: Assemble cartoon and the episodes in which they fight Thanos, I was kind of expecting the difficult bits of Infinity War. I was NOT expecting a cliff-hanger ending, which I quite enjoyed (and also wanted to scream about… but I enjoyed that the villain was not another “Oh, big, terrifying super-powerful villain…. that we destroyed fairly easily in 2.5 hours.”

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About the Author

Jenelle Leanne Schmidt first fell in love with stories through her father’s voice reading aloud to her before bed each night. A dreamer and relentless opener of doors in hopes of someday finding a passage to Narnia, it was only natural that she soon began making up fantastical realms of her own. The award-winning author has published four books in The Minstrel’s Song series as well as a couple of short stories. She resides in the wintry tundra of Wisconsin with her husband and their four adorable children who are all named after characters in The Lord of the Rings.